ONCE THE MEN FROM STóRA-BORG had eaten and retired to their tents for the night, Margrét picked up the dirty wooden bowls and returned inside. She smoothed the blankets over her sleeping daughters, and walked slowly around the small room, bending down to pick up the strands of dry grass that had fallen from the turf layered between the rafters. She despaired at the dust in the room. The walls had once been panelled with Norwegian wood, but Jón had removed the boards to pay a debt owed to a farmer across the valley. Now the bare walls of turf collapsed their dirt and grass onto the beds in summer, and grew dank in winter, issuing moulds that dripped onto the woollen blankets and infested the lungs of the household. The home had begun to disintegrate, a hovel that had spread its own state of collapse to its inhabitants. Last year two servants had died from diseases wrought by the damp.
Margrét thought of her own cough, and instinctively raised a hand to her mouth. Ever since the news brought by the District Commissioner, her lungs had issued rot with increased regularity. She rose each morning with a weight upon her chest. Margrét could not tell whether it was dread of the criminal’s arrival, or the night’s accumulated dross in her lungs, but it made her think of the grave. Everything’s collapsing inward, she thought.
One of the officers had gone to fetch Agnes from where they had left her tied with the horses. Margrét had only caught a distant glimpse of the woman when she had left the dim rooms of the farmhouse to bring the men their supper – a slight blur of blue, a smudge of skirt being hauled off a horse. Now her heart thumped. Soon the murderess would be in front of her. She would see the woman’s face; feel her warmth in the small confines. What was to be done? How to behave in front of such a woman?
If only Jón were here, she thought. He could tell me what I should say to her. It takes a man, a good man, to know how to manage a woman who has made her bed among stones.
Margrét sat down and absently picked at the grass in her hand. She had managed the servants who had drifted through her husband’s household for almost four decades, across as many farms, and yet she felt sluggish with her own uncertainty and apprehension. This woman, this Agnes, was not a servant, certainly no guest, and no pauper. She deserved no charity, and yet, she was condemned to die. Margrét shuddered. The light from the lamp played her shadow across the floorboards.
Dull footsteps sounded from the farmhouse doorway. Margrét stood quickly, the gathered grass fluttering to the ground as she released her clenched fists. The officer’s voice boomed from the shadows of the corridor.
‘Mistress Margrét of Kornsá? I have the prisoner. May we enter?’
Margrét took a deep breath and straightened her posture. ‘This way,’ she commanded.
The officer entered the badstofa first, smiling broadly at Margrét, who stood stiffly, her hands gripping the cloth of her apron. She glanced to where her daughters lay sleeping and felt the blood pulse in her throat.